Chapter 21 Ari #2
When women called one another girls, it was loving and sisterly.
But powerful men like him calling them girls while trying to explain why she should be okay with settling for less was infuriating.
Ari had spent the better part of her hockey career listening to men like him talk down to her.
Coaches who’d acted like they were doing some grand act of service by coaching a women’s team, and guys she’d dated whose actions always made it clear they thought she was just “good for a girl.” She knew dozens of men like Coach Clarke, and for years she’d just sat back and gritted her teeth through their empty platitudes. But not now, the stakes were too high.
“Qualifying for the Olympics is a real achievement,” he said in the tone of voice reserved for speaking to children.
“And I truly congratulate you for getting this far. I know it hasn’t been easy.
But you’ve got to be realistic, sweetheart.
It doesn’t make sense to penalize the men’s team when we all know that your team doesn’t have the best, shall we say, track record. ”
Ari was so shocked that it took her a second to register what he’d just said.
Penalize the men? Your team doesn’t have the best track record?
Be realistic, sweetheart? Be. Realistic.
Sweetheart. Just as Ari was trying to devise the most elegant, scathing response she could muster without ending her career, a knock rapped on the door.
Coach Clarke told them to come in, drawing his attention to the door as if he and Ari weren’t midconversation. In came Harrison. Ari’s stomach sank. Things were going from bad to worse. Harrison was Team GB’s golden boy; of course he was popping in to have a chat with his buddy Coach Clarke.
“Oh, sorry, Coach, I didn’t realize you were in the middle of something,” Harrison said, shooting Ari a smile that made her feel nauseous.
“It’s alright. We’re just finishing up, aren’t we?” Coach said with an air of finality.
Ari knew that the smart thing would be to leave.
Coach Clarke was infamously dismissive, and if there was one person she couldn’t afford to have rooting against her, it was the team’s head coach.
But then she thought back to the locker room and the dejected looks on her teammates’ faces.
They’d worked so hard to get here, pinned all their dreams on the Olympics, and for better or for worse, they’d accepted Ari as their captain. She had to fight for them.
“No. We’re not done.” Her voice was firm.
“Are you alright, Ari?” Harrison was using the warm, personable voice he used to get whatever he wanted.
It was one of the things that had initially drawn her in.
The whole knight in shining armor shtick.
It had been charming, at first; there was something nice about a man who took initiative and wanted to protect her.
It wasn’t a feeling she was used to, it made her feel special.
But Harrison used those moments to guilt-trip her into forgiving his wrongdoings.
Constantly reminding her of all the things he’d done for her.
Controlling her life and making her think the suffocating sensation she felt whenever she was around him was just the price she paid to show her gratitude.
But as much as her body tried to forget, her brain could still remember how awful he’d made her feel.
Harrison was a good-looking guy who was going to age into an ugly man.
His hair would fall out, his eyes would droop, and once he couldn’t win medals anymore, his athletic body would sag and wither.
The more a person knew him, the faster his charm faded.
Without his appearances, he would have nothing left. So, she reinstated her boundary.
“I’ve got this, Harrison. You can leave,” she said bluntly. He put his arms up in defense and backed out of the room, raising his eyebrows at Coach Clarke in the universal gesture of.
After Harrison closed the door behind himself, she turned her attention back to the man on the other side of the desk.
“I’m only asking for an extra twenty minutes,” she proposed. She wasn’t even asking for equal rink time, just enough to practice for one extra period.
“My hands are tied,” he said. But they both knew he had the power to call up the other coaches and get them to change the schedule.
“Just twenty minutes, please.” The word felt like acid on her tongue. “If we’re as mid as you implied, I’ll be out of your hair by the end of the week. Then, the men’s team can have all the time they want,” she said, trying to reason with him without getting herself into trouble.
“Sorry, there’s nothing I can do, and I think we should end it here because I have to head over to another meeting,” he said, getting ready to stand up.
Ari could feel herself losing him. She only had a few moments left to change his mind, so she tried a different strategy.
A strategy that she hated but knew was effective.
“Coach, you have daughters, right?”
As the words came out of her mouth, Ari got annoyed with herself.
She hated the idea of having to bring up the women a man loved to get him to respect women he didn’t care about.
She felt bile rise in her throat every time she read one of those “imagine she was your sister/daughter/mother/wife” analogies.
But she knew Coach Clarke. She’d spent her whole life dealing with men like him.
She didn’t want to demean herself, but she knew this was the only way to get him to budge.
“You have daughters and granddaughters, Coach. Imagine how inspired they’d feel if they got to see the British women’s ice hockey team make it to the Olympic quarterfinals for the first time?
” She prayed that the hopeful expression on her face would get him to believe the dream she was selling.
“No matter what comes next, we’ve got the chance to make history and inspire a new generation of girls. We just need your help.”
Reasoning like this was beneath her, but she was the captain now. She had to play the game if she was going to get the team what they needed. Coach looked at her and then glanced over at a framed picture of his daughters on his desk. He was so predictable.
“Twenty minutes,” he said. But Ari wanted to see how far she could push.
“Coach, our last group-stage game is in just a couple of days. A few hours of extra ice time would mean everything to us.”
The sweeter and smilier her expression got, the more she felt like a fraud. But she wasn’t leaving without a better deal for her team. They stood in silence for a moment as Coach Clarke thought it through.
“Alright, an hour. I’ll speak to the men’s coach. Make us proud,” he said with a nod, finally relenting.
She knew he would go home tonight feeling like the male feminist hero of the story.
Pat himself on the back for being such a good ally and congratulate himself for doing the bare minimum.
But Ari decided that she didn’t care about what had changed his mind, or how low she’d sunk to get him there.
The team had an extra hour of rink time, the same amount as the men’s team.
That’s all that mattered. So, she nodded, thanked him, and left the room.
The fake smile on her face faded as she stepped out of the office, then disappeared completely when she spotted Harrison loitering in the corridor.
“Were you listening to our conversation?”
The expression on his face told her everything she needed to know.
“I just wanted to make sure you were alright so I could jump in if anything went wrong,” he said without an ounce of self-consciousness. Because to Harrison, it wasn’t an invasion of privacy, it was just a regular Monday.
“Well, everything went well, so you can go,” she said, trying to escape the conversation she could tell he wanted to pull her into.
“I’m still really proud of you, you know,” he said. But she knew it wasn’t true.
Once the charm of their honeymoon period had faded, Harrison belittled her, criticized her teammates, and talked down on her dreams. And she let him.
They’d started dating at a point in her life when she didn’t feel secure about any of those things, and his words had felt like a reflection of how she already felt about herself.
But she’d outgrown those thoughts, then outgrown him.
“I always knew you’d make it this far,” he lied through his teeth.
“Harrison. I thought you said I ‘play in a middling team full of girls more concerned with their hair than their strategy’ and that us getting into the Olympics was a ‘pipe dream,’” she said, echoing the words from the conversation that had finally pushed her to end things.
“You know I only ever said that to motivate you, honey.”
“Is that what you call it? Motivation?” she asked, doing nothing to hide her disgust.
Usually, she did with Harrison what she’d done with Coach Clarke. Stayed pleasant, made things easier for the men around her, pretended not to be annoyed. But she didn’t have it in her to pretend that day. Whatever this lingering thing between them was, it needed to end.
“I’m your biggest fan, I always will be,” he said. Ari laughed at his audacity, but he kept on going. “I get it, you’re stressed out and emotional. Two losses is a lot, but don’t take it out on me. I’m just trying to help, babe.”
“Don’t you have something better to be doing, like training?” she asked. The smile on his face immediately faded away.
“So, you think you’re better than me?” he said, the mask slipping right off as he took a step toward her. “Well, I hate to break it to you, but you’re not. A girls team getting this far is pretty cool, but don’t let it get to your head.”
There it was. Painfully predictable. Ari felt nothing but contempt.
She’d spent so much of her life, and their relationship, tiptoeing.
Choosing her words in a way that ensured nobody got upset with her.
But she’d done enough of that for one day.
The more she thought about it, the clearer it became that she wasn’t going to get what she wanted or repel what she didn’t if she kept trying to manage other people’s perceptions of her. So, she stopped.
“Why don’t you redirect your energy out of my business and into upping your game?” she said. “Word in the Village is, you’re on a losing streak.” She watched thunder cloud his expression and tried not to flinch.
“Fuck you,” he said. “You’re never going to be anything more than just a novelty.”
Ari sighed. This was who he’d been all along. She’d just been too caught up to realize.
“Lose my number. Leave me alone. For good this time,” she said, turning around, walking out of the office building, and stepping back out into the snow. She was never going to look back.